5 ms·

It's not defeatist. First, we see more and more evidence that there's no democracy in the West, just a well decorated fake "democracy". All important positions

It's not defeatist. First, we see more and more evidence that there's no democracy in the West, just a well decorated fake "democracy". All important positions in government of USA are occupied by people from the oldest and wealthiest US families. Is it democracy? I doubt that. There's no freedom of speech. Which we hear is "freedom" of speech, because censorship is performed by not government, but private entities like Facebook, Twitter, Google. Yeah, maybe formally it's not a censorship for some strict definition of the word, but de-facto it's censorship and it's stronger than censorship ever were in Russia. Secondly, so-called "democracy" is weaponized by the West to oust regimes West doesn't like (e.g. that aren't willing to sell rights to exploit their natual resouces to Western corporations) or simply to bomb anyone they don't like. There's no need to explain anything: "We bombed Afghanistan because they have no democracy! Hooray!". "So, have people of Afghanistan started to live better after 20 years of bombing and killing?" - "You're banned from Facebook and Twitter for violating our TOS". Sorry, I no longer believe in "democracy".

mekkkkkk 6y ago
The purpose of democracy is to let citizens exercise control of their own country. Wealth, status, heritage etc. is always going to be confounding factors for this to work. Ideally the democratic process should account for this, but in reality it will always be a sliding scale. A truly perfect democracy doesn't seem possible. This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders. Alas, this is were it seems like a lot of Russians have just given up; "We'll have an authoritarian regime, because it's always been like that. This one isn't as bad as the previous ones, so it's fine."
- anticodon 6y ago
  A truly perfect democracy doesn't seem possible. Exactly. This is why it is also possible for USA to bomb or otherwise subvert any country because they don't confirm to some definition of democracy. Because there will never be perfect democracy, the strong bully can plunder any country saying: "You're not perfect democracy, so give up your resources to me!". This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders. Is there any country in the world where your voice would be heard unless you're a highly ranked bureaucrat or media star? In US, which is considered a "near perfect" democracy you can't say a lot of things because either you'll be blocked by monopolistic Internet media (FB, Twitter, YouTube) or you'll be "canceled" (like RMS and many others) or both. So what should we strive for? And why would I care? What do I need to say to the government? There're 140,000,000 of us in Russia and all have different opinions and little understanding outside of our area of expertise. If we'll all say something, the result we'll be chaos and noise. Besides, contrary to what western media says, there's more freedom of speech in Russia than in the West. E.g. I read critics of Putin every day on all Russian social networks. I have friends that criticize Putin for years openly. They were never even invited to police or their accounts blocked. So what?
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    The voice you have in a representative democracy is the right to vote for a candidate that acts as a proxy for your personal opinions, combined with the right to start a political campaign/party if none align with you. The foundation for this is fair elections and lack of censorship. Personally I do feel like I'm having my voice heard when I cast a vote at the ballot box. I'm not going to entertain your tangential whataboutisms. There are a lot of problems in the world today, we can agree on that.
  - ezconnect 6y ago
    Ycombinator is also a western propaganda and most Americans in here thinks they live in a democratic country. They will downvote you here if you don't parrot the US propaganda. They should try looking into their country from the outside.
    - ezconnect 6y ago
      They surrounded your country with military assets and materials and you are the one acting aggressively in their democratic propaganda media machines which is owned by a couple of billionaires. I think the west think you should move out of earth and move to another planet. Oh then they will accuse you of aggression again if you occupy the moon. The US probably envy your military budget for all the campaign you are doing to undermine their democracy.
      - croon 6y ago
        You forgot to switch accounts before your second post.
        ezconnect 6y ago
        It still me, that reply is just for the downvoters, ycombinator has been politcal lately not a tech news anymore. Propaganda is spilling over to all tech news sight in the past few years. Economist is one of the propaganda machine of the west it used to be a nice magazine.

mekkkkkk 6y ago

The purpose of democracy is to let citizens exercise control of their own country. Wealth, status, heritage etc. is always going to be confounding factors for this to work. Ideally the democratic process should account for this, but in reality it will always be a sliding scale. A truly perfect democracy doesn't seem possible. This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders. Alas, this is were it seems like a lot of Russians have just given up; "We'll have an authoritarian regime, because it's always been like that. This one isn't as bad as the previous ones, so it's fine."

anticodon 6y ago
A truly perfect democracy doesn't seem possible. Exactly. This is why it is also possible for USA to bomb or otherwise subvert any country because they don't confirm to some definition of democracy. Because there will never be perfect democracy, the strong bully can plunder any country saying: "You're not perfect democracy, so give up your resources to me!". This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders. Is there any country in the world where your voice would be heard unless you're a highly ranked bureaucrat or media star? In US, which is considered a "near perfect" democracy you can't say a lot of things because either you'll be blocked by monopolistic Internet media (FB, Twitter, YouTube) or you'll be "canceled" (like RMS and many others) or both. So what should we strive for? And why would I care? What do I need to say to the government? There're 140,000,000 of us in Russia and all have different opinions and little understanding outside of our area of expertise. If we'll all say something, the result we'll be chaos and noise. Besides, contrary to what western media says, there's more freedom of speech in Russia than in the West. E.g. I read critics of Putin every day on all Russian social networks. I have friends that criticize Putin for years openly. They were never even invited to police or their accounts blocked. So what?
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  The voice you have in a representative democracy is the right to vote for a candidate that acts as a proxy for your personal opinions, combined with the right to start a political campaign/party if none align with you. The foundation for this is fair elections and lack of censorship. Personally I do feel like I'm having my voice heard when I cast a vote at the ballot box. I'm not going to entertain your tangential whataboutisms. There are a lot of problems in the world today, we can agree on that.
- ezconnect 6y ago
  Ycombinator is also a western propaganda and most Americans in here thinks they live in a democratic country. They will downvote you here if you don't parrot the US propaganda. They should try looking into their country from the outside.
  - ezconnect 6y ago
    They surrounded your country with military assets and materials and you are the one acting aggressively in their democratic propaganda media machines which is owned by a couple of billionaires. I think the west think you should move out of earth and move to another planet. Oh then they will accuse you of aggression again if you occupy the moon. The US probably envy your military budget for all the campaign you are doing to undermine their democracy.
    - croon 6y ago
      You forgot to switch accounts before your second post.
      - ezconnect 6y ago
        It still me, that reply is just for the downvoters, ycombinator has been politcal lately not a tech news anymore. Propaganda is spilling over to all tech news sight in the past few years. Economist is one of the propaganda machine of the west it used to be a nice magazine.